The Black Shore

by Greg Cox

  Nalec, her companion and lover, strode beside her. His claws were fully extended, she noted, knowing how eager he must be to confront the aliens and devour their essences. Sitruua shivered. Compared to the sunny warmth of Ryolanov, the ship’s air-conditioned climate struck her as a bit chilly. She was definitely underdressed, she decided, for the current temperature. We’ll have to get the heat turned up, she resolved, after we’ve assumed total control of the ship.

  No Starfleet guards were posted outside the sickbay. Sitruua looked up and down the admirably clean, well-lighted corridor, but did not spot any of the visiting aliens. Good, she thought, signaling Nalec to advance. That makes our job easier. She was eager to return to the bridge with their prize. Such an easy victory could only increase their standing in Laazia’s circle. Already, they were numbered among the Heir’s favorites. “Now,” she whispered to Nalec. “Show no mercy.”

  “No mercy,” he echoed her, baring his teeth. She admired the keenness in his eyes, the controlled ferocity in his voice. Not even Naxor had ever looked so fierce and rapacious, she thought proudly. I chose well.

  She expected the door to the sickbay to slide open at their approach, as all the doors on Voyager had appeared to do. Instead it remained steadfastly shut. Sitruua hunted for a lock or handle, but found nothing that might fit that description. Perhaps, she concluded, the ship’s design was a little too streamlined. She contemplated her new phaser, tempted to try out the weapon’s power on the obstructing door. She was reluctant, however, to inflict too much damage on a starship that would soon belong to the Ryol. “Open up!” she shouted to whoever was on the opposite side of the door. “Let us in at once!”

  Nalec declined to waste time or energy on vocalizations. A snarl building in his throat, he pounded on the enemy’s door. His talons left long vertical scratches in the polished surface of the door. He kicked at the barrier with all his considerable might. Smiling, Sitruua saw the door shudder in its frame. A few more such blows, she judged, and the alien’s defenses would surely fall before the power of the Ryol. The visitors deserved punishment for such resistance, she knew; what a pity there would not be time to administer their torment with care. Proper discipline would have to wait until Voyager was safely on the ground and its former inhabitants prepared for training. She wondered how long it would take to convert them to proper neffaler. I hope they learn quickly, they thought. The old neffaler had been worn out to the point of near uselessness. It would be good to have able servants, and fresh sustenance, once more.

  His fists locked together, Nalec delivered a two-handed blow to the battered metal door. The impact of the strike echoed down the empty hallway. His handsome face contorted with rage, he drew back to come at the barrier again when, with a whoosh of released air, the door unexpectedly slid open.

  “That will be quite enough vandalism for the time being,” came an acerbic voice. Stepping quickly through the portal before the door could close again, Sitruua and Nalec discovered the source of the voice: a singularly unimpressive-looking humanoid in a blue Starfleet uniform. “I am the emergency medical program,” he said calmly. “How can I assist you?”

  His skull was smooth and nearly hairless—like a female’s, Sitruua thought scornfully—and his eyes appeared distinctly out of focus. Sitruua decided he was about the most pathetic specimen of alien life she had encountered yet. Odd, she thought briefly, I don’t remember seeing him down on the planet.

  “We’ve come for your captain,” she announced in a tone that disavowed any possibility of defiance. She scanned the medical facility, searching for the human called Janeway, but could not locate their prey. Sickbay looked deserted—even the sickbeds were empty—except for the laughable human physician standing in their path. “Give her to us.”

  “I’m sorry,” the human said, “but Captain Janeway has left the sickbay. There’s nobody here but me.”

  Sitruua scowled. Something about the physician’s manner irritated her. He seemed remarkably smug for a creature so beneath her on the food chain. “Where is she?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, “but I’m afraid I only dispense medical advice. Missing persons are an entirely different department.” He lifted a shiny metallic instrument from a tray on a nearby counter. “Perhaps you’d care for a vaccination? I hear there’s a bad Talaxian flu going around.”

  “Drop it!” Nalec growled. His reflexes were even faster than hers. He wrapped his fist around the human’s wrist and yanked the medic’s arm upward so that the strange instrument pointed at the ceiling. “Neffaler!” Nalec cursed him.

  “That’s Doctor Neffaler to you,” the balding human said, sounding curiously unperturbed, “and I can’t say I much care for that as a name.” Nalec refused to release the so-called doctor’s wrist. The veins in his own muscular arm swelled as he squeezed the other man’s arm. Sitruua wondered casually if The Doctor’s wrist would break before or after he was forced to release the instrument.

  “Really!” The Doctor said indignantly, rolling his mismatched eyes. “It’s only a hypospray, not a phaser. You’d think you’ve never been in a doctor’s office before.”

  “Surrender now,” Nalec snarled, “or I will shatter every bone in your body and suck out the marrow!”

  “How perfectly revolting!” The Doctor said. He glanced up at his captured wrist. “Very well,” he said with a weary sigh.

  Two things happened almost simultaneously. The “hypospray” fell to the floor, striking Nalec in the foot and bouncing off his other exposed foot before coming to rest, with a sharp metallic ring, upon the floor of the sickbay. And The Doctor’s hand slid effortlessly out of Nalec’s unbreakable grip. Sitruua blinked her pale green eyes, unable to accept what she had just seen. If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn in the name of the Elder’s unquenchable thirst that the bald human’s hand had actually passed through Nalec’s flesh and bone. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? None of these new neffaler had demonstrated that sort of transdimensional ability.

  “Carcass!” Nalec swore at The Doctor, on his foot one injured claw grew blue and swollen at its tip, the razor-sharp nail cracked down the middle. “Leftover!” Claws extended, he pounced for the human’s throat.

  “Be careful,” Sitruua called out, suddenly wary of this strangely unsettling human. “Watch out!”

  She was too late. Nalec’s claws passed through The Doctor like the wind, the momentum of his charge carrying him through the immaterial form of his adversary and into the counter behind The Doctor. He crashed noisily against the counter, sending the tray of medical instruments flying, then spun around in a frenzy of frustrated rage. Foam sprayed from his lips. His eyes were wild. The golden mane framed a portrait of homicidal fury.

  “Nalec, wait!” Sitruua cried, desperately trying to make sense of the situation. “He’s just an image, an illusion.”

  “No!” he barked. “I felt him before, he was as solid as you or I.” He glanced down quickly at his bruised right foot, then back at The Doctor. “How could he hold that instrument if he wasn’t real?” he wondered out loud. “His weapon is solid enough. Trust me on that!”

  Nalec is right, she realized. I hadn’t thought of that. She must have looked as puzzled as she felt, because The Doctor spoke again in an infuriatingly pedantic tone. “It’s very simple,” he said. “I can touch you.” He reached out and tugged on Nalec’s beard, pulling out a handful of stiff blond whiskers. “But you can’t touch me.” Acting on instinct, Nalec clawed at the offending human hand, but his talons merely sliced the air, while golden whiskers drifted slowly downward toward the floor. “Do you understand now?” The Doctor asked. “Or shall I demonstrate again?”

  “I don’t need to touch you,” Sitruua said icily, “to consume every last spark of your being.” She meant it, too; this hairless human irritant had provoked her beyond the limits of endurance. For a moment she forgot about the missing captain. All that mattered was teaching this miserable excuse for a sentient entity
who the true masters of the cosmos were. Impaling The Doctor upon her stare, she unleashed her hunger upon him. The doorways of her mind opened wide, sending out psychic tendrils of desire and need to drag his puny life-force into the irresistible vortex of her own superior will . . .

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but there seems to be something wrong with your eyes. Perhaps you should have them looked at? Excessive dilation can be a symptom of a wide variety of disorders, including substance abuse and Rigellian brain fever.”

  Arrrgh! Sitruua nearly screamed in frustration. Never before, except in competition with other Ryol, had she opened her mind to feed only to have her desire denied. Her hunger quested fruitlessly for the other’s essence; it was all she could do to keep the reins on her unfettered voraciousness, lest it turn and feed upon her own spirit and energy.

  It was maddening. She could see the arrogant neffaler, hear his smug and patronizing voice, but as far as her hunger was concerned, he wasn’t there. It was like trying to consume a vacuum. Wave after wave of insatiable need poured out of her eyes—only to crash against an equally thirsty accumulation of invisible psychic feelers. By the savage shadows of our distant home, she realized, Nalec was trying to devour The Doctor as well, and failing just as badly!

  For a second, their separate hungers grappled with each other, like hounds fighting in the street, but they both pulled back just in time, before they drained each other dry. Arduously, painfully, Sitruua drew her desire back into her body. Its unfulfilled appetite ached like a physical wound within her. “Enough!” she said, gasping to Nalec. She could see from his pained expression that he, too, had suffered while trying to recall his hunger. “We have wasted too much time on this . . . idiot phantom. Search these chambers. Find Captain Janeway!”

  The Doctor shook his head. “You aren’t listening to me. I already told you. The captain isn’t here. I’d ask you to make an appointment, but I’m afraid your friends are holding my assistant captive in a cave.”

  Good, Sitruua thought spitefully. I hope we butcher him or her. Forcing herself to ignore the bald ghost’s jibes, while trying to keep one eye on his occasionally tangible hands, she decided to look around for some clue to the captain’s whereabouts. “You inspect the laboratory,” she instructed Nalec, approaching the humans’ impressive-looking technological sickbeds. “I’ll search in here.”

  A slender black-and-silver artifact, lying atop one of the beds, caught her eye. At first Sitruua thought it might be another variety of exotic medical equipment. On closer inspection she recognized the clarinet as the musical instrument the human named Harry Kim had once played for her and Romeela in an entirely unnecessary effort to secure their attentions. The melody had been pleasant enough, she remembered, although both she and Romeela had enthused and applauded his little tune far more than it deserved. By the Elder, she thought, these neffaler were so easy to manipulate. She gave The Doctor a sideways glance. Present company excepted.

  Her hunger, thwarted mere minutes before, still throbbed inside her. The clarinet reminded her of the pleasure of feasting on these creatures, making her present hunger all the more keen. She and her sister Romeela had fed upon young Harry Kim more than once in the days and nights they had just left behind. She smirked, remembering; they had kept Harry so enthralled and enraptured that he hadn’t even noticed his life-force being drained away, bits and pieces at a time. Perhaps she would give Harry to Romeela as a present, once the ship was theirs and the entire crew had been domesticated.

  She licked her lips, momentarily lost in savory memories of nights gone by, when she heard Nalec emit a gasp of surprise. Straightening her back, she swiveled about in time to see her consort dropping onto his knees, his head swaying, his eyes bulging from their sockets. The bald phantom stood only a short distance away, tapping his hypospray against his palm. “Give it up,” he said in his usual insufferable tone. “That’s twenty-five cc’s of undiluted nareotrizarine. I don’t care what kind of freakish Delta Quadrant life-form you are, that’s enough to knock out a Horta.”

  Horta? Sitruaa was puzzled as well as alarmed. What is a Horta?

  Despite The Doctor’s treacherous attempt to poison him, a furious Nalec still managed to pull himself up off the floor. Sitruua’s heart stirred with pride at the sheer intensity of her lover’s indomitable rage. Even the self-important phantom physician seemed appropriately taken aback at Nalec’s resurgence. “Oh dear,” he muttered, “this is unexpected.” He hastily manipulated the controls of his hypospray. “Well, maybe another thirty cc’s couldn’t hurt.”

  He thrust his wretched device at Nalec’s mighty frame, brushing its head against the back of the Ryol’s neck. Sitruua heard a hiss of air, then watched as The Doctor sprang away from Nalec the instant his hypospray connected with its target. In his haste to become immaterial, The Doctor fell through the wall of the laboratory, so that all but his legs disappeared from sight. Sitruua heard the discarded hypospray clank upon the floor.

  Nalec roared in fury, but the second injection was too much for him. She saw his eyelids begin to droop, watched his expression slacken and his arms go limp. She stepped away from the empty sickbeds, her grip tightening around her phaser. “What have you done?” she cried out in rage.

  “I should think that was fairly obvious,” The Doctor replied. His head emerged from the apparent solidity of the wall as he awkwardly rose from the undignified position he had landed in. “Tell me, are all your people so resistant to sedation or was your friend just unusually hyperactive?”

  “You’re food,” she growled at him. “That’s all any of you are.” She could feel the cold metal of the phaser beneath her fingers. Could this compact little device possess enough power to destroy her foe? She raised the weapon uncertainly, having never fired a phaser before, and pointed it at the ghostly form of The Doctor.

  He raised a quizzical eyebrow, appearing unconcerned by the threat of the phaser. “Are you quite sure you know how to operate that thing?” he asked. “Take a doctor’s advice, put it away before you hurt yourself.”

  “Dead food,” she snarled. “Carrion fit only for scavengers.” She depressed a switch with her thumb and was gratified to see a brilliant azure beam shoot across the sickbay, striking the ghostly physician in the neck, less than a handbreadth beneath his offensively impudent mouth. Yes! she thought ecstatically. Die!

  “Arrgh!” The Doctor shouted, his face contorted with pain. He clutched his throat with both hands, swaying unsteadily upon his feet. “The pain! The agony! I can’t see . . . everything’s going black! Oh, dear god, I fear I’m bound for holographic heaven!”

  Wait a second, Sitruua thought, a scowl forming upon her face. Something wasn’t quite right about this.

  The Doctor’s posture straightened out. His face resumed its disdainful expression. “But seriously,” he said calmly, “I’m a doctor, not a casualty. I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that.”

  Sitruua fired up, raising the phaser to its highest setting. The beam caused a slight ripple where it intersected with The Doctor’s immaterial body, but he showed no sign of distress. The wall behind him, on the other hand, glowed brightly red where the beam struck it, the phaser burning a hole through the solid metal barrier until she could glimpse the laboratory area beyond the wall. A siren, triggered perhaps by the damage being done by the phaser, erupted from the walls. The shrill blaring noise pierced the air, hurting Sitruua’s ears. She switched off the phaser, but the siren continued.

  “That will be quite enough,” The Doctor said sternly. He walked across the chamber and reached beneath the pillow of the nearest sickbed. “Medical supplies are difficult enough to come by in this quadrant without you shooting up my sickbay.” He drew out a familiar-looking object that Sitruua identified as another phaser.

  “I confess,” he said, “that I prefer hyposprays to handarms, but I am capable of using this if necessary. I suggest you surrender.”

  A Ryol surrender to neffaler? Sitruaa howled
in fury. This was the final indignity; she could hear no more. She charged, claws extended, for the alien, eager to rend his flesh into bloody ribbons. If he’s solid enough to hold a phaser, she reasoned, maybe he was solid enough to die. The creature’s features remained impassive, but she was determined to carve a scream onto his face if necessary. There will be nothing left of you but scraps, she thought.

  She felt the phaser beam strike her before she saw the bright blue light. A numbing sensation raced through her body. She tried to resist the beam’s effects, but her flesh and spirit, already weakened by her failed attempt to feed, began shutting down. As she dropped onto the floor, only a few meters away from Nalec, the last thing she heard was The Doctor’s smug, insufferable voice.

  “Hmmm. I suppose phasers have their uses after all.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  THE TURBOLIFTS AREN’T SAFE, JANEWAY THOUGHT AS SHE raced with Tuvok and Harry Kim through the ship toward Engineering. If the Ryol had really taken command of the bridge, as Chakotay had warned her before being cut off, then who knew what systems they may have already have assumed control over. The last thing she wanted to do was get trapped with Tuvok and Harry in a frozen turbolift until the invaders came by to take them into custody. Damn, she thought. How in blazes did any Ryol get on the bridge?